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Updated: May 25, 2025
With all our alleged democracy, we realize the impossibility of ringing Mrs. Vanderbilt's doorbell and asking her to sell us a few flowers from her conservatory or to direct us to a good dressmaker, though we can take just such liberties with houses where the evidences that money would be welcome are patent.
These few significant extracts, from a mass of official reports, show that the commercial frauds were continuous, and began long before Commodore Vanderbilt's time, and have prevailed up to the present. It is estimated that manufacturers and shopkeepers cheat the people of the United States out of $200,000,000 a year by the light-weight and short-weight frauds.
Hosts of men, women and children perished every year of disease contracted in factories, mines and slums; but Vanderbilt's least ailment was given a transcending importance, while the scourging sweep of death among the lowly and helpless was utterly ignored.
W. K. Vanderbilt's splendid fancy ball in 1883, and it was much admired. There seems no reason why the grace, the dignity, the continuous movement; the courtesy, the pas grace, the skilfully-managed train, the play with the fan, should not commend this elegant dance to even our republican dancers; but it has not been danced this winter. It is possibly too much trouble.
Finally it is advisable to give flashlight glimpses into the modes and views of the time, inasmuch as it was in Vanderbilt's day that the great struggle between the old principle of competition, as upheld by the small capitalists, and the superseding one of consolidation, as incarnated in him and others, took on vigorous headway.
It was the period of William H. Vanderbilt's ascendancy in Western Union control; and the railroad millionnaire and his companions were objects of great interest to the young office boy. Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Edison were also constant visitors to the department.
"All I want," said the long-bearded man, "is enough to be comfortable. I would n't have Vanderbilt's wealth if he'd give it to me." "Nor I," said the landlord. I heard tell of a young man who went to Vanderbilt to get employment. Vanderbilt finally offered to give the young man, if he would work for him, just what he got himself.
But nowhere throughout the large extent of the Vanderbilt's possessions or those of other ruling families are found warlike garrisons as evidence of ownership. Those uncouth barbarian methods are grossly antiquated; the part once played by armed battalions is now performed by bits of paper.
The farcical ending of these revelations was the introduction in the United States Senate of a mere resolution censuring them as "guilty of negligence." Vanderbilt immediately got busy pulling wires; and when the resolution came up for vote, a number of Senators, led by Senator Hale, sprang up to withdraw Vanderbilt's name. Senator Grimes thereupon caustically denounced Vanderbilt.
With Ford, however, the spirit of service has been the predominating motive. His earnings have been immeasurably greater than Vanderbilt's; his income for two years amounts to nearly Vanderbilt's total fortune at his death; but the piling up of riches has been by no means his exclusive purpose.
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